The coronavirus crisis has led to truly unprecedented times for everyone and one of the sectors hit is journalism, but our unrivalled and award-winning news service continues to deliver the latest Isle of Wight news around the clock as we start a second lockdown.
We’ve been providing rolling coverage of the crisis since the start of the pandemic, which I can tell you is incredibly tiring, but we are still working hard to deliver breaking news as it happens. Our motto has never been more important… first, fast and free.
The need to convey important health and legal information from officials, as well as keeping Islanders informed of changes to events and keeping the community spirit alive, highlights the importance of local journalism. Islanders are incredibly lucky to have such good access to local news as in some parts of the country there are complete news deserts.
It may be at this point in the story you are expecting a desperate plea for donations. There is no plea here today – we are committed to ensuring our service doesn’t cost you a penny but that we are still here at the end of this crisis as the Island’s leading news website. I’d like to thank our loyal customers for their continued support, as well as the continued support of our readers.
Every cloud has a silver lining and this crisis will have benefits for businesses and communities, although they may be hard to see right now – especially as we enter a second lockdown. We will take the lessons learnt during this difficult time to improve our service moving forward. We are continuing to invest in new technology to ensure operational resilience, which has always been a core part of Island Echo.
We are now publishing over 450 articles a month and so far this year have published 4,400 stories, which is more than in the whole of 2019. We are proud to be Number 1 for ‘Isle of Wight News’ on Google and to have been crowned Micro Business of the Year at the IW Chamber Business Awards in 2019, as well as being Highly Commended for the ICNN Community Website of the Year at newsawards 2020.
You can place your trust in us to deliver accurate but timely news that has the Island at its heart. We are proud to be truly local and independent.
Thank you once again for your continued support.
Darren Toogood
Editor/Publisher
Good Work Island Echo. Keep it up.
Covid has an overall IFR of no more than 0.23% Meaning, if every single person in the UK contracted the virus (which is scientifically impossible), we’d see 154,000 deaths. The first lockdown is predicted to kill 200,000 (official gov figure). Now we are having another one.
Long overdue review. The government’s data is poor quality, over counts cases and hospital admissions and is misleading at best. Also the charts used at presentations are poor, misleading and change style and data set to suit narrative of the moment.
Darren Toogood thank you and your team, for all the hard work you do.
The first thing i do before work, is catch up on the island echo news. 🙂
The Echo does a fine job of getting the news before others and all for free. The fact we can comment on such is a huge benefit, to know, in these lock down times what other, diverse people are thinking to is interesting, the idiots and those who are just nasty can easily be spotted and ignored by the readers.
So the only thing I find annoying is the censorship is to me, a little OTT, whether that is by the Echo’s choosing or Gov guidance I don’t know, but unless crude or insulting to individuals then to me, all views should be discussed openly.
Best news site i use
Thank you IE
Echo thank you for giving people a voice, though sometimes I feel you bow to the MSM.but in general aloud free speech.